soft skills

Recently I have spent some time thinking about teams. How it happens that few people become a team? What factors are at play? This is pretty important to me right now because few weeks ago I moved to a new team. And I want this team become fantastic. So there is plenty to think about and plenty to do.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink is all about motivation. It explains why the old way of carrot & stick does not work any more. And it shows the new motivation based on three pillars: autonomy, mastery and purpose.

During Java Camp 8 (see www.java.pl/?p=216 - in Polish!) we had a 1h discussion about why we (Java developers) learn, what we learn, and how we learn. This blog post provides some notes (however, I do not claim them to be representative for the discussion - there are merely things that I remembered).

Seems like having my CV online and my profiles on LinkedIn and
Goldenline up-to-date makes ma a popular person among IT headhunters.
Great, this is exactly as I wanted it to be. But this is not what I
wanted to write about. Dear Headhunters, you contact me a lot, so let
me give you some feedback on your actions.

Source: http://blog.seriph.com/bunnies/oh-no

In general, you people are really tactful and it is a pleasure to talk with. Really. But there are few things that makes me mad. And this post is about them.

So I'm taking over a new project as a technical team lead. This team has been working for some time (for a long time). Now my task is to lead its further development. I'm excited and worried at the same time.

I spent some time wondering about what should I know about this new project and about the team. Here is the list of topics that I think I should gather some information about. Maybe someone else will find them useful. I also hope for someone giving me hints about things that I forgot.

The progress of computers and software has taught us, that there are not many things that can not be done. Linux, Google, Facebook, cloud computing, open source etc. has shocked us with solutions we hadn't even dreamed about. Still, I often hear (and use myself) this phrase: "it can't be done". This post is about trying to understand what is really hidden behind these words.